Every ballet company has its own history, its own set of traditions and stagings that shape its identity. For The Royal Ballet, works by 20th century choreographers Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan – both closely linked to the Company – form a key part of its history. But so do the Company’s own productions of the Russian classics.
It was with Ninette de Valois and Nicholas Sergeyev’s production of Marius Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty that The Royal Ballet established itself at the Royal Opera House in 1946, and with which it first won international acclaim at its groundbreaking US tour in 1949. This production, alongside more recent productions of 19th-century works such asPeter Wright’s Nutcracker and Giselle, remains a key part of the Company’s identity.
Something similar is true for the Bolshoi. As its 2016 London season demonstrates, the Moscow-based troupe’s wide repertory is drawn from right across its history. Le Corsaire, for instance, was first performed at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1858, two years after the ballet’s premiere in Paris. The version performed by the Bolshoi today was re-created byAlexei Ratmansky for the company in 2007, and is mostly modelled on the 1899 staging by Petipa. For this quintessentially grand Russian ballet, the lavish sets and costumes combine with Ratmansky’s staging to give more than a flavour of the exotic original.
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